Commission Regulation (EC) No 687/2008 of 18 July 2008 establishing procedures for the taking-over of cereals by intervention agencies or paying agencies and laying down methods of analysis for determining the quality of cereals (Codified version)
Modified by
Commission Regulation (EC) No 670/2009of 24 July 2009laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 as regards public intervention by invitation to tender for the purchase of durum wheat or paddy rice, and amending Regulations (EC) No 428/2008 and (EC) No 687/2008, 309R0670, July 25, 2009
Commission Regulation (EC) No 687/2008of 18 July 2008establishing procedures for the taking-over of cereals by intervention agencies or paying agencies and laying down methods of analysis for determining the quality of cereals(Codified version)THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 of 22 October 2007 establishing a common organisation of agricultural markets and on specific provisions for certain agricultural products (Single CMO Regulation)OJ L 299, 16.11.2007, p. 1. Regulation as last amended by Commission Regulation (EC) No 510/2008 (OJ L 149, 7.6.2008, p. 61)., and in particular Article 43 in conjunction with Article 4 thereof,Whereas:(1)Commission Regulation (EC) No 824/2000 of 19 April 2000 on establishing procedures for the taking-over of cereals by intervention agencies and laying down methods of analysis for determining the quality of cerealsOJ L 100, 20.4.2000, p. 31. Regulation as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 883/2007 (OJ L 195, 27.7.2007, p. 3). has been substantially amended several timesSee Annex IX.. In the interests of clarity and rationality the said Regulation should be codified.(2)The intervention price for common wheat, durum wheat, barley, maize and sorghum is fixed for qualities corresponding as far as possible to the average quality of the cereals harvested in the Community.(3)In order to simplify the management of intervention operations and, in particular, to permit the establishment of homogeneous lots for each type of cereal offered to intervention, a minimum quantity, below which the paying agency or intervention agency is not obliged to accept the offer, should be fixed. However, it may be necessary to provide for a greater minimum tonnage in certain Member States, so that the agencies may take account of pre-existing conditions and practices of the wholesale trade in those countries.(4)Methods of determining the quality of common wheat, durum wheat, barley, maize and sorghum must be defined.(5)The second subparagraph of Article 11(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 limits the quantities of maize which may be bought in by the paying agencies or intervention agencies throughout the Community to a total of 700000 tonnes in the 2008/2009 marketing year and 0 tonnes from the 2009/2010 marketing year onwards.(6)To ensure the satisfactory management of the system for intervention buying-in of maize, and to give economic operators in all Member States access to the intervention system under equivalent conditions, detailed procedures should be laid down specific to the award of the quantities of maize eligible for intervention. To this end, a mechanism should be introduced for the award of those quantities, covering the periods of the marketing year in which operators may submit offers, giving them sufficient time to submit their offers and allowing a uniform award coefficient to be fixed for all offerers where the quantities offered exceed those available. Provision should therefore be made for the offers to be examined in two periods, and timetables should be laid down for the submission of offers for maize and for deliveries and the associated takeovers.(7)Taking into account the periods for intervention buying-in laid down in the first subparagraph of Article 11(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007, and to ensure equivalent treatment of operators, provision should be made for a first period for the submission of offers for maize running from 1 August in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, from 1 December in Sweden and from 1 November in the other Member States, with 31 December as the last day for the submission of offers in all Member States. At the end of this first period the Commission will be obliged, where appropriate, to fix an award coefficient for the admissible offers submitted during this first period and to close the intervention for the remainder of the marketing year where the quantities offered exceed the quantity laid down in the second subparagraph of Article 11(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007. To avoid placing administrative and financial burdens on the paying agencies or intervention agencies and on operators, in particular by requiring securities to be lodged which could prove unnecessary in the absence of quantities to be awarded, provision should be made for a break in the submission of offers between 1 January and the date of publication in the Official Journal of the European Union of the quantity remaining available for intervention in the second period.(8)Given the time needed to fix the award coefficient for the first period where necessary, the second period for the submission of offers should commence on the day following the date of publication in the Official Journal of the European Union of the quantity remaining available for intervention, this being the first day for the submission of offers in all Member States. In this second period, the acceptance of offers should take place once a week, starting the first Friday following the publication of that quantity, on the basis of offers submitted by operators by 12.00 (Brussels time) on the Friday at the latest. Each week, by Wednesday at the latest, the Commission should post on its Internet site information for operators as to the remaining quantity available for intervention. Where the quantity laid down in the second subparagraph of Article 11(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 is exceeded, the Commission should fix and publish an award coefficient and close the intervention for the marketing year in question. In view of the intervention buying-in periods provided for in the first subparagraph of Article 11(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007, the second period for the submission of offers should in any case end at the latest by 30 April in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, 30 June in Sweden and 31 May in the other Member States.(9)To allow sound management of the award mechanism, it should be laid down that offers for maize may not be altered or withdrawn. Moreover, to ensure that offers are genuine, they should be subject to the lodging of a security, and the terms for checking that offers are genuine and for releasing the security should be laid down. To this end, this check should follow the same rules and conditions as those applicable to checks on stocks in public storage under Commission Regulation (EC) No 884/2006 of 21 June 2006 laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 as regards the financing by the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) of intervention measures in the form of public storage operations and the accounting of public storage operations by the paying agencies of the Member StatesOJ L 171, 23.6.2006, p. 35. Regulation as amended by Regulation (EC) No 721/2007 (OJ L 164, 26.6.2007, p. 4).. In addition, between the start of the submission of offers in the first period and 31 December, several months may elapse. To avoid placing a financial burden on operators submitting offers in this first period, it should be allowed for the security that has to be lodged on submission of the offers, when it is lodged in the form of a bank guarantee, not to be payable until the day following the final day for the submission of offers.(10)Common wheat and durum wheat are covered by minimum quality criteria for human consumption and must satisfy the health standards laid down by Council Regulation (EEC) No 315/93 of 8 February 1993 laying down Community procedures for contaminants in foodOJ L 37, 13.2.1993, p. 1. Regulation as amended by Regulation (EC) No 1882/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 284, 31.10.2003, p. 1).. The other cereals are mainly intended for animal feed and must comply with Directive 2002/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 May 2002 on undesirable substances in animal feedOJ L 140, 30.5.2002, p. 10. Directive as last amended by Commission Directive 2006/77/EC (OJ L 271, 30.9.2006, p. 53).. Provision should be made for those standards to be applicable when the products concerned are taken over under the present intervention scheme.(11)Cereals of inadequate quality for use or storage should not be accepted into intervention. To this end, account should be taken of the situation regarding intervention, in particular the long-term storage of certain cereals and its effects on product quality.(12)Therefore, in order to protect intervention products from deterioration and to maintain their suitability for subsequent use, the quality criteria for maize should be upgraded. To this end, the maximum moisture content and the maximum percentage of broken grains and grains overheated during drying should be reduced. Given the agronomic similarities of sorghum and maize, and in the interests of consistency, the same measures should be laid down for sorghum.(13)To improve the quality of storage conditions and provide a guarantee of this from the time the offers are submitted, the places where the cereals are stored at the time of the offer should be such as to guarantee the best possible conservation, in particular over a long period as regards maize. It is therefore necessary to limit the possibility of taking over the cereals in the offerer’s store and to authorise this kind of takeover only where the cereals are kept by storers within the meaning of Article 2(2)(a) of Regulation (EC) No 884/2006. In such cases, the offerer should undertake to apply mutatis mutandis in his relations with the storer, as from submission of his offer, the same rules and conditions of storage and control as are applicable under Regulation (EC) No 884/2006.(14)The potential for mycotoxin formation has proved to be linked to specific conditions, identifiable essentially on the basis of the weather conditions recorded during the period of growth and, in particular, flowering of the cereals.(15)The risks entailed by exceeding the maximum thresholds for admissible contaminants can be identified by the paying agencies or intervention agencies on the basis of the information received from applicants and their own analysis criteria. In order to limit the financial costs, therefore, there is justification for requiring analyses, under the responsibility of the agencies prior to the taking-over of the products, only on the basis of a risk analysis enabling the quality of the products to be guaranteed on entry into the intervention scheme.(16)The conditions under which cereals are offered to and taken over by the paying agencies or intervention agencies must be as uniform as possible throughout the Community in order to avoid any discrimination between producers.(17)Intervention prices should be increased or reduced to reflect price differences observed on the market for different qualities.(18)In addition to requiring an annual stock statement pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 884/2006, the Member States must check the state of preservation of the intervention stocks held.(19)Article 2, Articles 6(2)(d) and 7(2)(b) of, and Annex XII(1) to Regulation (EC) No 884/2006, lay down the rules on responsibility. Those Articles and said Annex specify in particular that Member States are to take all measures necessary to ensure the proper preservation of products which have been the subject of Community intervention and that quantities which have deteriorated on account of the normal physical storage conditions or by reason of overlong preservation are to be recorded in the accounts as having left the intervention stock on the date when the loss or deterioration was established. They also specify that a product is to be deemed to have deteriorated if it no longer meets the quality requirements applicable when it was bought in. Consequently, only such deterioration as that laid down in those provisions may be covered by the Community budget. Where a decision taken by a Member State at the time of purchase of a product is inadequate in the light of the risk analysis required by these rules, that Member State should therefore be liable if it later emerges that the product did not comply with the minimum standards. Such a decision would not make it possible to guarantee the quality of the product and, therefore, ensure its proper preservation. Consequently, the circumstances in which a Member State is to be held liable should be specified.(20)Details should be given of the information that Member States must forward to the Commission so that a fortnightly statistical report on the state of intervention stocks of cereals can be compiled.(21)In the interests of sound management of the system, the information required by the Commission should be sent by electronic means.(22)Specific information should also be obtained and listed on a standard regional basis. The regional levels set out in Council Regulation (EEC) No 837/90 of 26 March 1990 concerning statistical information to be supplied by the Member States on cereals productionOJ L 88, 3.4.1990, p. 1. Regulation as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 1791/2006 (OJ L 363, 20.12.2006, p. 1). should be used, and Member States should be asked to forward this information to the Commission.(23)Equally, the information required by the Commission should be sent on the basis of models containing the information required to manage intervention, made available by the Commission to the Member States, and these models should apply once the Management Committee has been informed and then, where applicable, adapted and updated by the Commission under the same conditions.(24)The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Management Committee for the Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets,HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: